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2.3 News Feat Pakistan MH NEWS FEATURE NATURE|Vol 440|2 March 2006 Shaking the foundations Last autumn’s deadly earthquake caught Pakistan’s government and scientific community off guard. Now a handful of officials and academics are struggling to bring the country up to code. Geoff Brumfielreports from the scene. n the morning of Sunday 8 October, guard, says Khawaja Azam Ali, dean of the fac- In the wake of last October’s disaster, which residents of Pakistan’s capital, ulty of natural sciences at Quaid-i-Azam Uni- killed at least 73,000 people, a fledgling move- Islamabad, were shaken from their versity in Islamabad. The last time Pakistan ment has emerged to prepare the nation for Obeds. The city was in the grip of an experienced a massively destructive earth- future earthquakes. The government has earthquake so violent that people could barely quake was in 1935, when the western city of pledged millions of dollars to build a new seis- stand to flee. On the western side of town, a Quetta was flattened, killing more than 30,000 mic network, and local universities are ramp- poorly constructed apartment building col- people. This time, says Ali, “knowledge about ing up programmes in seismology and lapsed, killing dozens. the earthquake risk was zero. There were sim- earthquake engineering. But success will Closer to the quake’s epicentre, the story was ply not many people thinking about it.” require a sea change in Pakistan’s attitude worse. In the northern city of Muzaffarabad, That’s surprising, because winding through towards seismic risk. concrete buildings pancaked, killing their res- the foothills just beyond Ali’s office window is The nation’s military government will have idents instantly. Massive landslides wiped out a geological fault hundreds of kilometres long. to release sensitive data that have remained villages perched on steep mountain slopes, It is one of about half a dozen similar faults hidden. Universities must train a new com- and falling rock severed the narrow highway running more or less through the heart of munity of seismologists. And ultimately, ordi- that connects the mountainous region to the Islamabad. They are a silent reminder that this nary people — many of them illiterate — will rest of the country. Phone lines were down, but troubled nation — home to grinding poverty, have to be educated about how to survive rumours were flying. Some said nuclear test- tribal insurgencies, radical Islam, and more quakes. This effort will take collaboration ing had caused the event. than two dozen nuclear warheads — lies in one between the military, civilian government and The earthquake caught most Pakistanis off of the world’s most seismically active regions. educational institutions on a scale never before TARIQ MAHMOOD/AFP/GETTY IMAGES MAHMOOD/AFP/GETTY TARIQ 16 ©2006 Nature PublishingGroup NATURE|Vol 440|2 March 2006 NEWS FEATURE seen in the country. But it can be done, says Pakistan’s army has another reason for Ali: “If there is such cooperation, then yes, EURASIAN secrecy: the country’s most active seismic there is a chance of progress.” PLATE areas are in the contested region of Kashmir. The problem is formidable. Pakistan lies at AFGHANISTAN Since the partition of India and Pakistan in the junction of three tectonic plates (see IRAN 1947, both countries have laid claim to the graphic). From the southeast, the Indian region. To this day, roughly 100,000 Indian plate is sliding towards Afghanistan at some and Pakistani troops stare at each other across 40 millimetres each year, while from the south- PAKISTAN a delicate line of control. Fearing that either west the Arabian plate moves northwards at a ARABIAN side could gain even a tiny edge from geo- nearly identical clip. Caught in this geological PLATE I N DIA spatial measurements, “both India and Pak- pincer movement is a small promontory of the istan have said that nobody can do any kind of massive Eurasian plate. As the Indian and Ara- INDIAN GPS measurements”, says Jack Schroder, a seis- bian plates plough into Eurasia, they push up PLATE mologist at the University of Nebraska in the Himalayan and Hindu Kush ranges in Omaha who has worked in Pakistan. northern Pakistan, and a series of smaller AR ABIA N “This paranoia is completely unfounded,” ranges along its borders with Afghanistan and SE A Epicentre contends Roger Bilham, a geologist at the Uni- Iran. The enormous compression warps and versity of Colorado, Boulder. “Aerial photo- tears the plates, creating hundreds of active graphs are available to everybody, maps were faults throughout the country. “The paranoia is completely left by the British, and if you want to know Nearly all of the major faults have been cata- unfounded. If you want to know exactly where something is, you can get a GPS logued by the Geological Survey of Pakistan. exactly where something is, you can receiver from Wal-Mart. If the government But the survey did little beyond mapping each wants to save people, they’ve got to protect fault. To assess the danger, seismologists need a get a GPS receiver from Wal-Mart.” them from earthquakes, not India.” record of the tiny tremors that rattle the coun- — Roger Bilham In fact, there are signs that Pakistan’s mili- try almost daily. Collecting data from multiple tary government is opening up. Immediately seismic stations on those smaller quakes shows after the October quake, government officials which faults are currently under stress. Qamar-Uz-Zaman Chaudhry, director-general asked non-profit groups and relief agencies to Such ‘microseismic’ data have been collected of the meteorological department. One main remove satellite photos of the affected areas for years by three public agencies: the Water reason, he says, was the army’s concern that the from their websites (see Nature437, and Power Development Authority, which data could be used to monitor explosive tests 1072–1073; 2005). But after a brief public out- oversees the nation’s dams; the Atomic Energy related to the nation’s nuclear programme in cry, the authorities quickly relented. “The gov- Commission; and the Meteorological Depart- the lead-up to its 1998 nuclear tests. “Previ- ernment and whole country have been ment, which is formally responsible for seismic ously there were fears about nuclear monitor- awakened,” says Umar Farooq, director of the monitoring. But historically, that information ing, and that has hampered our cooperation Institute of Geology at the University of the has not been made public, according to with other countries,” Chaudhry says. Punjab in Lahore, who has criticized the gov- ernment for its secrecy. Chaudhry adds that the government has also begun establishing cooperative agree- ments with the United States, China, Iran and W. THOMPSON W. Japan. These would allow for the exchange of data and equipment, among other things. But Pakistan has yet to establish any working rela- tion with India, which shares many of the same geological faults (see page 1). Such openness is a positive step, says Julian Bommer, a seismologist at Imperial College in London. But to build an effective model of seismic risk, he says, “you need to supplement microseismic information with the earth- quake history”. Knowing the size and fre- quency of quakes along individual faults gives seismologists a sense of what those faults can produce. Such information, in turn, is a major ingredient of the complex formulae that deter- mine earthquake risks and building codes. Historical records of earthquakes in the region are spotty at best, Bommer says. To compensate, geologists must travel to individ- ual faults and conduct trenching surveys, which analyse soil for signs of past earth- The Kashmir earthquake revealed the inadequacy of Pakistan’s building codes and seismological data. quakes. Trenching is a rough way for geologists 17 ©2006 Nature PublishingGroup NEWS FEATURE NATURE|Vol 440|2 March 2006 Portrait of the seismologist as a young woman Finding a seismologist in Pakistan studies, so she pushed us instead.” faults in the region of Kashmir is nearly as difficult as finding a By ‘us’, Lisa means herself where last October’s earthquake woman working outside the home. and her 11 siblings. Collectively, struck. The work, which involves So the fact that Mona Lisa (a print the family could now be a measurements and computer BRUMFIEL G. hangs in her apartment) is both university department all on its modelling, impressed reviewers makes her an anomaly and a own: as well as Lisa, five brothers such as Frank Roth, a seismologist symbol of change. hold PhDs in physics, one sibling at the National Research Centre for The 33-year-old received her has a master’s, and two more Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany. PhD in earthquake seismology in are pursuing PhDs. “She’s really hard-working,” he January from Quaid-i-Azam Lisa too originally planned on says. The only weakness in her University in Islamabad, the first being a physicist, but when she thesis, he says, is a lack of detailed full PhD in seismology that a graduated from Government data about the region’s seismic Pakistani university has ever College in Islamabad, she found history. “But I wouldn’t say that’s produced, according to colleagues. herself gravitating towards geology her fault,” he adds. She was born and raised in instead. “I liked the variety of Lisa has now secured a Islamabad. Her father was a tax courses,” she says. Islamabad, the men refused to professorship at Quaid-i-Azam officer with the finance ministry Being a woman in Pakistan’s stand on the same side of the fault University, and she hopes to use and her mother a schoolteacher male-dominated society made as the women.
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